Tekton style like tweeter array good idea?

[jools]

At around the 2 minute point in the Guttenberg interview, Alexander stresses a distinction between Tekton speakers and audiophile speakers. That could explain a LOT

 

[ahofer]

Just upfront -I don't want anything to do with the drama as of late, I have never measured speakers, and have no expertise into the topic. Just a casual audio enthusiast.

I have a pair of Tekton Electron SE speakers with central Be tweeter. I have found them to have really great midrange detail and clarity, which to me is comparable to Paradigm Persona 3F towers that I also own. Of course this is just my subjective experience and as has been mentioned there are no published measurements I am aware of other than the limited ones posted by Stereophile of a few of their models.

It sounds like the manufacturer is going to publish measurements in the future. I hope that is the case, and I hope others can evaluate them on their own to see if those reported measurements stack up.

Couldn't stand those speakers (Paradigm 3F) when I auditioned them. They sounded quite thin and treble-forward to me.

Graphs and Measurements for Paradigm Persona 3F

www.spinorama.org

and their cousins the 5F below. Seems like a house tuning where they compensate for lower reflected soundpower with raised on-axis tuning (see 10Khz in both charts). I wonder if the 3F is doing the same thing.

Paradigm Persona 5F loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

 

[Timcognito]

Thanks for the technical evaluation and this thread. It is refreshing to get away from the incessant blathering on the other Tekton threads*. Has the EAC data been posted on Tekton speakers? I would be nice to look at that.

*I promised to stop blathering over there, then couldn't help myself, and proceed to blather more.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Yep, I saw the diyAudio thread. My sketch above is based on that info.
I just couldn't find any info on the Moab or Encore speaker with the double circular arrays. But even there, you can form different groups of tweeters, allowing you to control the directivity.

If the crossover is correct, the center tweeter gets the fullest bandwidth. The top and bottom get a bit less bandwidth and the sides get the least. The designer describes the outer tweeter as a midrange but the center driver is covering the same low frequencies as the “midrange”. The thread describes this array as an attempt to form a 2 dimensional CBT. If so, seems a rather crude passive one but have not seen measurements or heard them. Supposedly, Tekton is going to start posting measurements, so may be we will see.

 

[Rick Sykora]

At around the 2 minute point in the Guttenberg interview, Alexander stresses a distinction between Tekton speakers and audiophile speakers. That could explain a LOT

Save me some time and elaborate on what is presented. Already listened to the designer’s comparison between the violin string mass and the mass of a driver cone. Seems pretty much like audiophool stuff to me.

 

[jools]

Save me some time and elaborate on what is presented. Already listened to the designer’s comparison between the violin string mass and the mass of a driver cone. Seems pretty much like audiophool stuff to me.

I'm sorry but that was about where I baled.

 

[Blockader]

I read this with interest. Would you be able to give a brief explanation as to why panels, mangers, and plasma tweeters are fundamentally flawed?

Problem with Panels, Air-bending Manger drivers: Beaming.
Plasma tweeters: Low sensitivity, low max SPL, average distortion. The only thing they can do well is to produce frequencies up to 150khz. Piezo drivers are better in reproducing very high frequencies, they can have incredibly high max SPL too. That's the transducer choice in high resolution submarine-finding sonars.

 

[EERecordist]

In my opinion no.

Science it would be an interesting challenge to measure. It probably makes the "sweet spot" very lumpy and sensitive to exact position. When we do the Spinorama, I doubt it has enough small angular steps to detect the diffraction. So maybe one could construct a lidar system to measure 3d air density.

If you are in a concert hall with acoustic instruments, all the instruments reflect on the surfaces, enter the ears and are perceived by the auditory nervous system.
If you are making a stereo recording, the soundfield of direct and reflected instrument sounds impinge on the microphone.

It is a close enough approximation that the eardrum, and the microphones are perfect pistons, then the playback in tracking, mixing, and mastering are monitored by speakers which are pistons, then it comes to our speakers or headphones which are pistons. In speaker design we like to have all the drivers planar and ideall coincident, especially for nearfield.

Even in farfield, the Altec 604 came out in 1944 with a coaxial driver and used very commonly in professional studios to mix many recordings considered classics today.


It is hard for me to imagine their tweeter array is accurate because of diffraction. Their multi-tweeter or midrange may sound novel, and some listeners may like novel over accurate.

BTW, I was in a Best Buy, and the Mcintosh Labs buyout group has McIntosh in BB, but not listed online. There were a few McIntosh narrow towers with multiple tweeters, and they even had an MC275 on display.

(it may be a good idea if you want a high margin between parts and final cost)

 

[Randolf]

In my opinion no.

Science it would be an interesting challenge to measure. It probably makes the "sweet spot" very lumpy and sensitive to exact position. When we do the Spinorama, I doubt it has enough small angular steps to detect the diffraction. So maybe one could construct a lidar system to measure 3d air density.

If you are in a concert hall with acoustic instruments, all the instruments reflect on the surfaces, enter the ears and are perceived by the auditory nervous system.
If you are making a stereo recording, the soundfield of direct and reflected instrument sounds impinge on the microphone.

It is a close enough approximation that the eardrum, and the microphones are perfect pistons, then the playback in tracking, mixing, and mastering are monitored by speakers which are pistons, then it comes to our speakers or headphones which are pistons. In speaker design we like to have all the drivers planar and ideall coincident, especially for nearfield.

Even in farfield, the Altec 604 came out in 1944 with a coaxial driver and used very commonly in professional studios to mix many recordings considered classics today.


It is hard for me to imagine a tweeter array is accurate because of diffraction. It a multi-tweeter or midrange may sound novel, and some listeners may like novel over accurate.

BTW, I was in a Best Buy, and the Mcintosh Labs buyout group has McIntosh in BB, but not listed online. There were a few McIntosh narrow towers with multiple tweeters, and they even had an MC275 on display.

(it may be a good idea if you want a high margin between parts and final cost)

Thanks for pointing me to McIntosh, never was thinking of McIntosh as a loudspeaker manufacturer. Infcat the XR100 https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/products/speakers/XR100 looks a little bit similar to the Tekton tweeter array design:

4 6 inch woofers
8 2 inch midrange inverted titanium dome drivers (300-2000 Hz)
2 2 inch midrange/tweeter inverted titanium dome drivers (2000-8000 Hz)
1 3/4 inch titanium dome super tweeter

Anyway even the XR100 uses midrange drivers for the midrange and not tweeter like Tekton does.

BTW the XR100 is a pretty old design (around 2012?), so introduced before the Tekton Patent 9247339 from 2016. Perhaps it is similar enough to invalidate the Tekton patent, but that is something for the lawyers.

 

[mhardy6647]

Even in farfield, the Altec 604 came out in 1944 with a coaxial driver and used very commonly in professional studios to mix many recordings considered classics today.

Two pairs of 'em here (B and E morphs)
Superb to listen to. The only real drawback with the older Duplexes is a very narrow "sweet spot" (i.e., limited treble dispersion).
Limited LF and HF extension, too (of course), but that's not hard to work around if one needs to.

 

[Keith_W]

Without a long, boring technical breakdown, the philosophical issue with these designs is that they focus on solving one or two problems and sacrifice everything else. Panels reduce crossover complexity (some of the time) and moving mass (for LF anyway) and sacrifice any kind of smooth spatial radiation and bass. Mangers are designed to be very wide band and sacrifice bass and efficiency. Plasma tweeters, I have no idea, they have no moving mass. I almost respect the plasma tweeters as art simply because they are such an absurd product.

If you want an esoteric technology that works, look at unity horns and cardioids. The big genelecs sort of combine both technologies which is why they are for me the biggest and baddest speakers you can buy.

Funny you should mention that. This was what I was doing over the weekend:

Red Spade Audio PSE-144 Unity Horn, based on a Danley design. And as for absurd products, I have one of those at home too

All that hissing and crackling disappears after a few minutes. Apparently it needs to burn off all the dust which settles in the plasma chamber.

 

[617]

Funny you should mention that. This was what I was doing over the weekend:

View attachment 362877

Red Spade Audio PSE-144 Unity Horn, based on a Danley design. And as for absurd products, I have one of those at home too

All that hissing and crackling disappears after a few minutes. Apparently it needs to burn off all the dust which settles in the plasma chamber.

I've seen the red spade stuff!
In fairness to Tekton, they seem to be going for dynamics, which any horn person will tell you is an underrated aspect of performance as I'm sure you know. You can't just damp every resonance down to zero, you need some sound to come out of your transducers.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Since I brought up the question if the money wouldn't be better spent on 2 high end midrange drivers than on a huge number of tweeters: Here is an extreme example from an expensive Tekton model: https://tektondesign.com/product/full-range-speakers/flagship/ulfberht/#color

https://tektondesign.com/product/full-range-speakers/flagship/ulfberht/#color

The base price is 9830$, but they offer an optional upgrade to Beryllium tweeter arrays (30 drivers) for 11970$. Is this really a good idea? This beams the price of the speaker into the very high end category like a KEF Blade 2 Meta. The upgrade price is indeed somewhat reasonable since Beryllium tweeters are really expensive (https://www.soundimports.eu/en/scan-speak-d2908-714000.html)

The designer's major claim is about his epiphany around faithfully producing an A note from a violin. However, even the fancy scan-speak tweeter does not reach that low, so the reproduction of the violin is spread between his woofer and the tweeter array. This is probably why he does not document his crossover points as it would contradict his own dubious claim. Lacking a dedicated midrange, most of his other speakers would have the A note fundamental (and its 2nd harmonic) being reproduced by the (much higher mass) woofer...

I prefer designs where the solution corresponds to the problem statement. Not only is the mass argument flawed, but he also goes on to negate his own claim as his design is unable to meet the alleged low mass driver mass requirement for reproducing an A note. As for the Ufberht, it uses 7-inch midranges. They have the potential to cover an A note and its harmonics, but they will have much higher mass than he claims is desired. Once again, his own design negates his original claim for needing low mass.

 

[p.trianon]

Couldn't stand those speakers (Paradigm 3F) when I auditioned them. They sounded quite thin and treble-forward to me.

Graphs and Measurements for Paradigm Persona 3F

www.spinorama.org

and their cousins the 5F below. Seems like a house tuning where they compensate for lower reflected soundpower with raised on-axis tuning (see 10Khz in both charts). I wonder if the 3F is doing the same thing.

Paradigm Persona 5F loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Thanks for the input! I always thought the 3F sounded very good but was lacking a bit in as sense of totally disappearing in the room. They also lack low bass extension but I bought them with the intention to pair them with a sub. Sorry I know that is a very non scientific way to describe them. I do have the original boxes and can send them off for measurement if that would interest this forum. They are big boxes, how much would that cost to ship them I wonder?

 

[Rick Sykora]

@Randolf please also note that the Tekton patent is built around this supposition about the mass of parts of instruments in relation to the mass of speaker drivers. Also that these speaker would use these low mass drivers to create more accurate sound. As I posted earlier, even if the claims were scientifically valid, none of the Tekton speakers appear to implement.

There is a good thread explaining the mass science here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-enables-a-faster-speaker-driver.25910/page-3

 

[nerdoldnerdith]

Operating a tweeter(s) that close to the resonant frequency is never a good idea. Tweeters have very little in the way of suspension and are produced in such a way that there is a lot of inconsistency around the resonant frequency from tweeter to tweeter. You cannot expect any two tweeters to perform the same at lower frequencies. They also behave nonlinearly at lower frequencies, which is why basically every speaker crosses them over well above the resonant frequency. It's just common sense in speaker design not to operate a tweeter that close to the resonant frequency. The best midrange is obviously a midrange, not a bunch of tweeters. Even if the goal were to use a hexagonal array of midranges, you could use six 1" midranges. Using tweeters is just dumb, like everything about Tekton speakers.

But it's unique, and that's all it takes to find a niche in the audiophile market. If you have something that looks different and makes sound, people will still take an interest in it.

 

[617]

Operating a tweeter(s) that close to the resonant frequency is never a good idea. Tweeters have very little in the way of suspension and are produced in such a way that there is a lot of inconsistency around the resonant frequency from tweeter to tweeter. You cannot expect any two tweeters to perform the same at lower frequencies. They also behave nonlinearly at lower frequencies, which is why basically every speaker crosses them over well above the resonant frequency. It's just common sense in speaker design not to operate a tweeter that close to the resonant frequency. The best midrange is obviously a midrange, not a bunch of tweeters. Even if the goal were to use a hexagonal array of midranges, you could use six 1" midranges. Using tweeters is just dumb, like everything about Tekton speakers.

But it's unique, and that's all it takes to find a niche in the audiophile market. If you have something that looks different and makes sound, people will still take an interest in it.

Ironically you can find 1+" midranges with a larger Sd than a dome tweeter with a smaller flange than the 104mm flange on most dome tweeters. Aura whisper and peerless units among others.

 

[Randolf]

Since Tekton doesn't really specify crossover points but this would be an important information to judge on their tweeter array, I looked up what I can find in the various Youtube videos. I found:

1. "for example the Tekton MOAB ... we've got these tweeters contributing to the freqeuncy response at 270 Hertz"
2. "all combined to do the mid-range down to 400 act technically these devices start kicking in at 270 280 Hertz they start contributing to the frequency response at 270 Hertz"
3. "especially with the model like the ulfberht where it plays down into the 200 Hertz region"

So this is really really low for a tweeter, significantly lower than the resonance frequency of any dome tweeter I am aware of. Unfortunatly the above information is not really precise. Is it the crossover point or some point where the SPL has already rolled off a lot? Sometimes manufactures become very inventive in their specs, e.g. AER claims that their 8" BD full range drivers have a 20-80000Hz frequency response. Only when looking at the graphs (at least they provide one) you see 80kHz at -50db (whatever this information should be good for). So I guess at the end someone really needs to measure these tweeter arrays or examine the crossover network to find out what the actual crossover point really is.

 

[voodooless]

The MOAB BE crossen at around 770 Hz according to Stereophile, which makes sense given the fact of 600 Hz. No way the nine BE version will cross at 270 Hz.

 

[Gwreck]

I read this with interest. Would you be able to give a brief explanation as to why panels, mangers, and plasma tweeters are fundamentally flawed?

IMO the narrow directivity of a flat penal ESL is one of the benefits(for certain applications) of that type of driver.